The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee has some sort of a Midas touch: Everything it touches becomes more expensive.
The cost of constructing the venues for the Games has already gone up 250 per cent, from Rs 1,000 crore to over 2,400 crore. And the final accounting has not been completed as yet.
Information provided by the Organising Committee of the Commonwealth Games under the Right to Information Act now reveals that the committee is a willing participant in this cost escalation.
The committee has spent an eye-popping Rs 29.29 lakh on snacks served at meetings to review ongoing projects.
The committee headed by Suresh Kalmadi has so far convened 57 meetings and an expenditure of Rs 29.29 lakh was incurred on "snacks and other items" in connection with these meetings, the RTI reply states.
This is part of the information supplied by the Committee to RTI applicant Abhishek Shukla.
For example, a sum of Rs six lakh was spent on the first broadcasters' meet. This meeting was attended by about 100 participants.
Another sum of Rs 1.75 lakh was spent by the organising committee on snacks and refreshments for a one-day meeting of the Executive Board.
At first, junior officials of the Ministry rejected the application saying it had no information. But senior officials directed that the information be supplied to the applicant.
The application was then transferred to the organising committee which sent the reply.
The whole process took nearly five months even though the statute mandates a maximum period of one month.
The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to be held in NewDelhi between October 3-14 this year.